Keep Awake
Keep Awake
O that you would tear open the heavens and come down. Isaiah 64
Advent is a season of longing for God’s saving, healing presence. It is also a time for remembering where to look for God.
The prophet Isaiah knows where to expect God’s arrival. While he starts this chapter searching the sky, hoping for some apocalyptic divine intervention, he eventually remembers that God is already as near to us as a loving parent to a child—or as a potter to clay. God is lovingly shaping and molding us to be God’s people and to live into God’s reign. It might take longer and disappoint us when we’re looking for a quick fix, but it is the way that God has chosen.
Advent is a time for waiting, yes, but more than that, I think it is a time for looking in new places for God’s presence. It is a time to wake up to God’s active, guiding, shaping work in our own lives and in the rest of the world.
Years ago, Pastor Heidi Neumark and her congregation, Trinity Lutheran in Manhattan, created a homeless shelter for LGBTQ youth. I heard Pastor Neumark Heidi tell a story about one of the kids who stayed at the church, a transgendered young woman who had grown up in Utah and found her way eventually to New York their church shelter. Heidi heard her one day playing the piano in the basement. She stopped her work and listened a while. When the song was over, Heidi complimented her on the music. As they talked, the young woman said, “This is the only place I feel human.”
That statement is a sad indictment of our culture and the circumstances that such young people face on a daily basis. But reflecting on that conversation, Heidi was hopeful about what God was doing through her congregation. She said that on that day, in that moment, their church basement had become a manger. It was a place where God was present and revealed in a brand new way.
“Keep awake,” the Gospels tell us. God’s coming might not catch the attention of the newspapers, but God comes nonetheless. God comes into the real needs of this world and into our sharing them together.
Come to be with us, O God. Keep us awake to your gracious presence and opportunities to serve you. Amen.